[thelist] Three dimensional button with Photoshop

Joshua Olson joshua at alphashop.net
Mon Mar 18 16:17:01 CST 2002


What about what I call the "poor-mans sphere"

Use an image
- load image onto a layer
- use the marquee tool to draw a circle around the part of the image you
want to use
- ctrl-c, ctrl-v to paste region to new layer

Plain Color Disk
- open a new layer
- use the marquee tool to draw a circle
- fill it in with the color you want

>From here the steps are the same:
- right click on the new layer and select Effects...
- disable drop shadow
- enable bevel and emboss
- set depth and blur to sufficiently high numbers
- play around with the other settings for highlight and shadow

wolah!

This is by no-means a way to take a flat image and wrap it around a sphere.
But, it will take an image that is already a sphere and add shading--like a
planet or an orange.  One note, this technique works ok on small images, not
big images, due to some limitations in the bevel and emboss tool.

In your original post, I believe you actually mentioned planets
specifically.  Here's a trick to generate planets on the fly.

- open an image that has a region of color roughly the same color that you
want your planet.
- apply a strong motion blur along the angle of tilt you want your planet.
If your planet should have no tilt on the access, then apply the blur at an
angle of zero.
- decide what part of the image has the best color area for your planet
- follow instructions above

HTH,

-joshua




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